Dear Colleagues,

At the end of 2019, a novel coronavirus named severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was discovered in Wuhan (China) and became pandemic. SARS-CoV-2 is the cause of heterogeneous diseases, mainly respiratory, ranging from flu-like symptoms to severe interstitial pneumonia that requires hospitalization. In a small but non-negligible percentage of patients, COVID-19 pneumonia results in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or death. Imaging is involved in COVID-19, for the diagnosis and management of patients (e.g., for discharging patients to home, for hospitalization or admission to intensive care unit). Considering that COVID-19 is a systemic disease, organs other than lung are in some cases involved (e.g., myocarditis). Quantitative imaging extracts quantifiable features from medical images for the assessment of the severity, degree of change, or status of a disease. In COVID-19, the quantification of pneumonia or the extent of well-aerated lung obtained visually or by software at admission chest CT are biomarkers of disease severity, and have prognostic significance. Nevertheless, the long-term consequences of COVID-19 pneumonia are still poorly understood. Many patients suffer from long-term sequalae, ranging from a specific syndrome with multiorgan effects or autoimmune conditions lasting weeks or months after COVID-19 illness (post-acute COVID-19 syndrome) to less-severe symptoms such as mild, unexplained dyspnea.

Therefore, the quantification of imaging biomarkers could provide additional information to better identify patients at risk of developing COVID-19 sequalae and to detect causes of unexplained symptoms after COVID-19. To contribute to the knowledge base on these issues, the following topics will be considered:

• Evolution at imaging of COVID-19;
• Imaging biomarkers at admission as predictors of COVID-19 long-term sequalae;
• Quantitative imaging of long-term COVID-19 sequalae.

Dr. Davide Colombi
Guest Editor

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• COVID-19
• post-acute COVID-19 syndrome
• dyspnea
• cough
• respiratory failure
• pneumonia, interstitial
• pulmonary embolism
• acute respiratory distress syndrome
• myocarditis
• neuritis
• computer applications and software
• pulmonary function test
• AI (artificial intelligence)
• thorax